


The Call Everyone Button

by rvst



Series: Neither Birds Nor Prey [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Trope Bingo Round 3, Trope: Against All Odds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvst/pseuds/rvst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara and Helena grinned fondly at each other. Helena was the latest addition to the 'Felicity is cute' club, joining Oliver, Sara, and a reluctant Nyssa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Call Everyone Button

Night twenty-seven of their partnership.

Sara Lance sat behind the wheel of the SUV she shared with Helena Bertinelli as they drove through the rougher parts of Starling City. They'd decided before setting out that they would only be out for three hours. Felicity added a countdown timer to the GPS screen before she retired to bed for the night. It read in big blue letters 42:52, and Sara blinked rapidly as she fought back a yawn.

She took the earliest shift at Verdant and usually didn't wake until after noon, but she still managed to burn herself back out in the pre-dawn hours. Thankfully, Helena didn't seem to notice and didn't offer either blonde any information about what she did with her daylight hours, although Sara did serve her more than one complicated cocktail late on their nights off.

Sara turned into a street she knew had five drug dens on it, she pushed this fact from her mind. Helena scanned the people on her side of the road while Sara did the same. They disregarded the numerous junkies and dealers, they were going to be there until the police task force rolled into the street within the week. Sara grinned at the dealers, picturing them in jail made her feel less guilty about leaving them to their business for the night.

Helena held no such reservation, but still seemed concerned about the youthfulness of more than one of dealers. Her eyebrows drew together underneath her mask. Sara felt the need to explain.

“The kids will get lighter sentences, and they are relatively expendable while being easily manipulated,” she rattled off, quoting almost verbatim from her father when he explained the issues of this neighbourhood over their weekly lunch. The police had no interest in throwing already disadvantaged kids into adult prisons.

“That makes it okay?” Helena asked, turning in her seat to stare at a boy who couldn't have been older than thirteen. “These kids-”

Sara's world went white for a moment. Her side of the car caved in as a sedan smashed into it. Helena barely had time to react before another collided with them on her side.

Sara slammed her foot down on the accelerator, but the SUV was blocked by two more sleek black cars colliding head-on to stop their escape. Helena slouched in her seat and pulled out her crossbows. Sara threw the car into reverse and dreaded the noise of car on car when she pressed the pedal.

Two more cars rear-ended them. Sara took a long breath to settle herself. Then cursed herself for being so against keeping guns in the car. They weren't prepared to fight off a four-sided assault. Helena caught herself as her hand reached for the button that controlled the windows. She had to reassure herself that Felicity modified the car to be mostly bulletproof. Mostly.

Sara open the app Felicity made for both of the vigilante groups, and pressed the bright red button labelled 'CALL EVERYONE'. She smiled despite the situation at Roy's whining that the button wasn't titled 'I FUCKED UP, SEND HELP'. The phone started beeping, a steady monotone noise that would turn on every tracking system Felicity had at her disposal along with alarm absolutely everywhere.

Helena smacked her when the SUV's alarm started blaring. Sara smacked her back. “If we live, take it up with Felicity!”

Helena seemed satisfied but opened her mouth to retort. She was cut off by the people currently pinning them in place opening fire.

There were twelve of them, and they weren't especially well-armed. Only handguns if Sara's quick looks while twisting and turning in her seat was right. Helena yelped every third or forth shot, despite the glass stopping each and every one of them. Sara tried to hold herself steady under the onslaught, but her nerves were starting to crack.

“They aren't assassins, right?” Helena asked between her shocked outbursts. Sara shook her head.

“The League doesn't appreciate guns much.”

“Then who are they?” Sara didn't have an answer, though her gut wanted to blame Oliver.

“Rival mob?” Helena smacked her again. “Okay, not the mob.”

The SUV continued to sound its alarm, and Sara's phone kept beeping. She stared at it and willed someone to answer the call. The bullets weren't doing much individually, but they were starting to breach the integrity of the wonder glass Felicity found.

Sara reached into the back seat to get the back-up crossbows and started methodically loading them for the point of no return, when the bullets won their battle with the glass. Helena ignored her in favour of studying the attackers closer.

“None of the cars have plates on them, but they look new,” she observed, fumbling for her own phone with the cold willingness of a woman who had achieved her vengeance. Sara glanced at her partner. If they survived, they were going to need another chat about suicidal tendencies. Helena successfully retrieved her phone and opened the recording function.

“Seriously?”

“If they get in and we don't survive, Oliver will need to know as much about them as possible right?” Helena answered, her voice even. She raised the phone closer to her lips. “There's twelve of them, lightly armed. Their cars are probably stolen from shipping containers, foreign models without plates. I think they're all male?” She turned to Sara, eyebrow raised in question.

“Probably.”

“Canary agrees. They aren't talking to each other as far as I can tell,” Helena continued, going on to describe their gear in further detail probably, Sara stopped listening at that.

She picked one of the men and stared hard at him while he reloaded. Helena was right, they weren't talking to each other. The assault was also lasting longer than Sara would have estimated. She quickly noticed that this was because none of the twelve seemed to be coordinating their aim very well, therefore the glass was taking longer than it should to fail.

“They're operating independently,” she said to Helena, who repeated it into her phone. “Odd.”

Helena didn't repeat that.

Sara's phone stopped beeping suddenly, replaced by Felicity's groggy voice, “you better be about to die.”

“We are!” Sara and Helena yelled in unison. Felicity seemed to be cured of sleep instantaneously.

“Are those gunshots? Where are you? Are you alone?”

They ignored her questions, used to her habit of talking while panicking. Sara tried to talk as calmly as possible. Like Helena was, only less resigned to death.

“We called everyone, like you told us to, you're the first to respond. We are pinned down by twelve men with guns. The windows are holding but that won't last forever,” Sara rattled off, sharing a grim smile with Helena as Felicity started audibly typing.

“Okay, I've got your location, Roy's closest according to his tracker, I'll set off his home alarm,” Felicity said, shaky but much calmer. “Do you have a plan if he can't get there?”

“Shoot our way out before the glass gives up,” Helena stated before Sara could formulate a response.

“We are?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Helena fired back.

“Not getting killed sounds great to me!” Sara yelled. Behind her the back windscreen gave a massive cracking noise, both occupants of the car slid further down in their seats instinctively. “Or we shoot out way our the doors before that fails completely.”

“Harper! Wake the hell up!” Felicity screamed.

“Uh, Lance?” Helena poked at Sara, not turning away from the passenger window. “There were two of them over here, and now there's only one.”

Sara leaned forward to get a better view, movement out of the corner of her eye stopped her. One of the four attackers at the front of the car collapsed. “What the f-”

“Damn it, Roy, no more late nights for you young man!” Felicity huffed. “Did you say one of them went down?”

“Two-”

“Three!” Helena interjected while pointing behind Sara's shoulder. Sara turned just in time to see a man on her side of the car collapse like the others. “We might not die.”

“Because two against nine is so much better,” snapped Sara, exhaustion getting the better of her.

“No more for you too, Amazon!” Felicity apparently gave up on polite at three in the morning. Sara and Helena grinned fondly at each other. Helena was the latest addition to the 'Felicity is cute' club, joining Oliver, Sara, and a reluctant Nyssa. “Do not make me ground all of the little vigilantes.”

Sara laughed out loud. “I already have a mother, Felicity, you can stand down.”

“Sara Lance! You are about to be turned into Swiss cheese, and you take time to mock?”

“You're cute and mock-able, multi-talented.”

“Very multi-talented,” agreed Helena, as another of their frontal attackers collapsed. “Yeah, the so aren't concerned about each other.”

“Could it be the League?” Felicity asked, her voice back to calm-ish. Calmer, at least.

“Nyssa negotiated on my behalf with her father, I'm on the Persephone Program as of last month,” Sara said quickly as she slowly unlocked the doors. She correctly assumed that the men were following strict orders to the letter. All they had done was pin the SUV and shoot randomly at it. “Ready?”

“Neither of you are concerned about what or whoever is out there?”

Helena shrugged, though Felicity couldn't see her do it, “they're on our side for the minute.”

“I'd rather die fighting than cowering in here,” agreed Sara. Helena's remaining shooter fell. “Your side's clear.”

“So's your,” replied Sara, pointed unnecessarily. “We wait for those two to reload,” she nodded towards the front of the car, “and use to doors as shields after we take out the four behind us.”

Helena thought about it for a full five seconds. “Better than definitely dying, I guess.”

One of the men behind them went down, “better than dying,” Sara repeated with a mad grin.

Armed with two crossbows each, they curled a finger around the door handle.

“Three, two,” Helena counted, in place of 'one' they forced the doors open while the frontal men reloaded. A second man behind them fell.

Sara shot low, aiming for a kneecap. Helena shot high, aiming for a shoulder. Felicity said many four-letter words at the both of them and they threw their spent crossbows into their respective foot-wells. Both bolts hit home and the men crumpled in pair like the others.

The repetitive, almost rhythmic shooting started up again from the front of the SUV. Neither of the two remaining men were considering aiming around the doors, or moving now that their targets were much more vulnerable. Sara caught Helena's eyes, holding up three fingers.

Another pair of shots, Sara lowered a finger.

The glass above Helena's head shattered and Sara counted down to one.

On their last shot, Sara's glass fell on her head as well.

They stood in unison. Before either woman could shoot, both men grasped at the metal object suddenly lodged in their legs.

They fell. Sara ran to the man closest to her while Helena started a wide lap around the wreckage, crossbows raised and gaze flicking around in hyper alertness. Sara vaulted over one of the cars and cradled the man's head as he passed out to the pain. She slapped him a few times to make sure he wasn't faking and grunted in frustration.

“What's sticking out of their legs?” Helena called from behind the SUV. Sara reached down to pull it out. She screamed as pain tore through her arm, near her wrist. Helena was at her side in seconds. “What was that?”

Before Sara could answer, Helena was knocked backwards.

Helena heard Felicity yelling, demanding an update probably, then she tore her eyes away from her lovely view of the stars to investigate whatever hit her right shoulder.

“What the hell?”

Helena agreed with Sara's assessment. Sticking out of her shoulder, half embedded and shining in the moonlight was a hunk of shaped metal.

Before passing out to pain, Helena could have sworn the metal looked like a bat wing.

The world went black.

**Author's Note:**

> Well that got longer than I thought it would be.
> 
> I think I know where I'm going with this.


End file.
